"Garcon Cart'rette!" he said abstractedly--he had always called her
that.

He was about to move on. She frowned in vexation, yet she saw that he
was pale and heavy-eyed, and she beckoned him to come to her.

"What's gone wrong, big wood-worm?" she said, eyeing him closely, and
striving anxiously to read his face. He looked at her sharply, but the
softness in her black eyes somehow reassured him, and he said quite
kindly:

"Nannin, 'tite garcon, nothing's matter."

"I thought you'd be blithe as a sparrow with your father back from the
grave!" Then as Ranulph's face seemed to darken, she added: "He's not
worse--he's not worse?"

"No, no, he's well enough now," he said, forcing a smile.

She was not satisfied, but she went on talking, intent to find the cause
of his abstraction. "Only to think," she said--"only to think that he
wasn't killed at all at the Battle of Jersey, and was a prisoner in
France, and comes back here--and we all thought him dead, didn't we?"

"I left him for dead that morning on the Grouville road," he answered.
Then, as if with a great effort, and after the manner of one who has
learned a part, he went on: "As the French ran away mad, paw of one on
tail of other, they found him trying to drag himself along. They nabbed
him, and carried him aboard their boats to pilot them out from the Rocque
Platte, and over to France. Then because they hadn't gobbled us up here,